Big money, big names the big winners in DCCC race

Supervisor Scott Wiener makes it rain in the DCCC race (Credit: The Chronicle)

Believe it or not, there were some people who cared desperately about Tuesday’s sleep-inducing election.
In fact, there were 51 of them.

They were the candidates for 24 seats on the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee — known, if at all, as “the D-triple-C.” The group is the official San Francisco Democratic Party, and its endorsements for other political offices are among the most significant to voters.

So how much did those 51 candidates care?

Between them, they raised what is expected to approach half a million dollars, believed to be an all-time record in a DCCC race. Much of the money came from major unions and downtown groups including the San Francisco Apartment Association.

The body is pretty much the same politically as it was before, though if anything, it shifted slightly away from the progressive side which took control four years ago and toward the moderate side.

The only mayoral staffer to win was homeless director Bevan Dufty, though he surely has more name recognition from his eight years as supervisor. Neighborhood services director Joaquin Torres lost — and, in a surprise, so did education liaison and school board member Hydra Mendoza.

So the mayor didn’t have coattails, but the Board of Supervisors sure did if riding your own coattails counts. In fact, for the first time ever, the majority of the Board of Supervisors won seats on the committee. The winners are John Avalos, David Campos, David Chiu, Malia Cohen, Scott Wiener and Eric Mar.

Asked what that means in terms of the Brown Act governing, um, government, the city attorney’s office said, “Our office has not been asked to opine on this matter.” (We actually did ask them to opine, but apparently we don’t count.)

Alix Rosenthal, who won re-election to the DCCC, works on good government issues for the city attorney’s office in Oakland. We asked her to opine as well.

“It means that if the DCCC will be discussing matters within the jurisdiction of the Board of Supervisors, those DCCC meetings need to be noticed as meetings of the Board of Supervisors,” she said.

Yes, that’s right, folks. One thing this election did accomplish is ensuring there are even more meetings of the Board of Supervisors.

Eleven of the 18 women running won seats. Compared to the committee’s previous total of…drumroll please…11!

Cohen said the women’s slate helped get some new women elected and that’s she’s already looking forward to creating another women’s slate in 2014. “It’s the first stab,” she said. “I’m excited and fired up and looking forward to putting together the next women’s slate.”

So if not much of anything changed on the DCCC, what did this election — watched closely by dozens — show? Name recognition matters. So does money. And the committee is no longer a training ground for political newcomers but another feather in the cap of political old-timers.

“Money begets money,” Rosenthal said. “I have friends who are talking about running in two years and what I’m telling them is you need to convince people to drop off the DCCC before you run or it’s going to be nearly impossible.”

Rafael Mandelman, who won re-election to the committee, said he’d be fine with one or two supervisors on the committee, but doesn’t like the fact there are now six.

“When you have a majority of the Board of Supervisors on the county committee, it starts feeling like the same set of people are monopolizing all the offices,” he said.

Larry Bush, who publishes the CitiReport blog, said he’s never seen this much money flow in a DCCC race. Wiener alone raised $70,000, roughly double the second biggest money raiser, Zoe Dunning.

Bush, a progressive, says it’s a problem that the committee now has Wiener and five other supervisors as members.

“By having six supervisors on there, you have foreclosed a number of seats for people to gain experience in our political process,” he said. “It sort of gobbles up the landscape, and it doesn’t give us an opportunity for more diverse viewpoints.”

He said the supervisors clearly want to influence who wins the committee’s coveted endorsements. “I don’t think they’re signing up to be on the DCCC so they can go out and do voter registration,” he quipped.

But Wiener said the big names and big money show people actually care about the important, if often overlooked, committee.

“There are some counties in the state where they can’t get enough people to run, and that’s not a good thing,” he said. “The fact that people actually care is good. The DCCC matters, and it should not go under the radar.”